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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28942419">Waning Sun</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseygoose/pseuds/gooseygoose'>gooseygoose</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>NCT (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Kinda, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Time Travel, Trauma Bonding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:13:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,741</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28942419</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseygoose/pseuds/gooseygoose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hendery thinks their adventure lasted too long and ended too early.</p><p>It would've been a damned nightmare if it hadn't been such a beautiful summer morning.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Wong Kun Hang | Hendery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Challenge #4 — Awaken The World</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Waning Sun</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Winwin entered the practice room, the rest of them let out a loud cheer. Taeyong and Jaehyun immediately rushed over to fuss over him, and Yukhei's entrance meant that Mark just had to burst into laughs. Doyoung stands up to go over to Sicheng too, but freezes as the last person enters.</p><p>Hendery gives a small, but awkward smile to everyone else. He won't look Doyoung in the eye.</p><p>Yuta, of course, is the only one who notices in all the commotion. Yuta likes to observe, and it's obvious to him that they both froze at the sight of one another. Last time he checked, they didn't even talk. He nudges Doyoung. "Hey - what's up with you two?"</p><p>"It's nothing."</p><p>Yuta doesn't think it's nothing. It's not like Doyoung to ever go out of his way to make things more awkward - something about that man wanted to befriend everyone, even the people who straight up didn't like him.</p><p>He shrugs it off. "Don't make him feel awkward - I know you two don't really know each other, but be better about that."</p><p>Doyoung stubbornly won't say anything to him, and still won't look over at Hendery's direction. The excitement he feigns for Winwin is so painfully fake that even Jungwoo flinches. Winwin just looks confused. </p><p>There's a schism between them, and Yuta is glad sometimes that WayV was kept apart from NCT. Fans are constantly watching, and love to nitpick at every breath they breathe, especially if there's some 'beef' between two members whom he's never even seen talk to one another. </p><p>That doesn't matter to him though, and he pushes himself off the chair to go to Hendery himself. He can be the one to make the conversation if Doyoung was going to be stubborn about this.</p><p>Hendery stiffens a little when Yuta gets to him, before swapping to his brightest smile. It's fake too. He also notices the look they share and the conversation that passes between their eyes. </p><p>*****</p><p>Hendery thinks their adventure lasted too long and ended too early. Doyoung had estimated that it took them 5 years. 5 long years, 1 in Seoul and 4 long years running up and down the coastline of Asia. </p><p>One snapshot in the sun. A million years in a minute. An entire lifetime in a second. One summer that never ended.</p><p>The first few weeks had been difficult. They had met up by mere coincidence, or more honestly, by force of habit. It was hardwired into their brains to go to the SM building, so naturally, they found themselves there, and only each other there. </p><p>And then it was surviving.</p><p>Food wasn't the hardest part of the equation. The stoves still lit when they turned on the burner, and all the food in the fridge stayed cold - but then they ran out of food. It wasn't like their managers could order the groceries online for them, nor could they order their own food. Not when no one else was moving.</p><p>So, they had justified a few things in their heads, and headed to the grocery store and left some money on the cash register the first time. </p><p>Eventually, they stopped caring. Eventually nothing really mattered, because at the end of the day - well, there was no end of the day per se. </p><p>Sleeping whenever they could because the sun never went down. Dreaming of the sunsets and sunrises they worried they'll never see again. Reading a book for the first time in forever because none of their devices ever did more than just flicker. The clocks never changing. The sun never moving. The shadows never shifting.</p><p>It would've been a damned nightmare if it hadn't been such a beautiful summer morning.</p><p>Getting to know each other, as Doyoung and Hendery, NCT members off camera, was strangely intimate when not a single sound echoed around them. And painfully awkward when no one was also there to smooth over the conversation bumps. The first few topics revolved around the members they knew, and then slowly trailed off into the abyss. The silence then was so foreboding, and so impenetrable.</p><p>It was just them. Doyoung and Hendery.</p><p>The 5th floor never seemed so lonely. The living statues of their members tucked away in a room of their own. Doyoung couldn't bear to see them so frozen, and Hendery had escaped his own dorm in his loneliness. </p><p>They only had each other. Doyoung and Hendery. </p><p>Hendery knew it was inevitable for them to grow close. Something between them, softened by the languid summer that never ended. Something between them, elastic and needy, drawing each other ever closer and closer.</p><p>Their first year had reached a conclusion long before they could draw their own, and soon enough, they became used to the endless days. If not, then they had all the time in the world to get used to it.</p><p>By the time they left Seoul, they were riding on the high of escape. That line between misery and elation was crossed over and over again. It was thin, barely see through. They winged it over and over again. Trial and error. Highs and lows. </p><p>A time when nothing mattered and anything was possible in the endless summer. </p><p>**********</p><p>Doyoung in the flesh radiates the same energy every time Hendery sees him.</p><p>It shouldn't surprise him anymore, but Hendery is always surprised by how well he knows him - every look, every twitch, every turn of his mouth - for two people who have supposedly never talked. </p><p>There's a sunken look to his cheeks, but a liveliness in his eyes. Hendery recognizes his relief, and his exhaustion. </p><p>Hendery wonders if he looks for better or for worse. Probably worse. He's staunchly ignored all the questions his mind threw, and slept through any residual feelings. Sleeping so damn much makes him tired and cranky like a bad TV show with too many seasons. But it's better than trying to figure out why time stopped for years, and then left them to pick up all the pieces. </p><p>He almost forgot how the other members were like, honestly. He's never forgotten about them, but he has forgotten them. It took a long time to accept that they were gone forever, and now that they're back, he doesn't know how to deal with it in grace. Ever since then, he's been terribly uncomfortable, and terribly awkward around them in their own home.</p><p>They had always joked that a silent Hendery was a thing to be feared. Yukhei's furtive glances, and Kun's very obvious worry made him feel guilty - but guilt was a pittance compared to how overwhelmed he felt. </p><p>He dealt with that one by sleeping. Sleeping and sulking. </p><p>Even then, as lonely as he's become, he still can't quite bring himself to call Doyoung and ask how he's doing, how the 127 members are, how he's managing to transition. It felt like a chapter of his life closed without him knowing. It's better to accept it than to fight.</p><p>"Are you sure? We could bring you something back?" Sicheng tentatively reaches out, but leaves the door closed between them.</p><p>"I'm good."</p><p>"But- it's your favorite…" Yangyang tells Sicheng to give up, even with Hendery sitting right there. He turns to the cooler side of his pillow. Not even Bella could get him out of bed, not the promise of good Chinese food, nor the promise of talking and joking with his members.</p><p>The front door closes, and the silence that engulfs him is just not quiet enough. </p><p>His soul misses someone, and it aches for a summer that's turned to autumn. In an ironic turn of events, only time can heal this sort of loss. </p><p>***********</p><p>The rain in Jiangsu had been suspended in the air like little needles. When they touched Hendery is when they finally melted into his skin, warm and gentle like the Chinese summer.</p><p>They had biked their way through the old towns, and stolen cars like teenagers in China - the summer in the North had felt thick, but in the South, it was like swimming in soup. Whenever their car ran out of gas, they just took another, it's not as though the people in the cars knew what was happening.</p><p>Hendery had tried his best to teach him Chinese. The familiar lilts and tones Doyoung has always heard from Renjun and Sicheng but never grasped sounded different coming from Hendery. With practice, he claimed, Doyoung would be great at Chinese.</p><p><em>You can practice with me!</em> He had laughed freely. <em>I'll teach you all the pick up lines.</em> He had also wagged his eyebrows at Doyoung who shoved him away like an annoying dog.</p><p>They ate the street food, plucked right from the server's hands. They snatched the frozen koi fish right out of the lakes, the large lotus flowers half bloomed in the sun, the curtains mid-billow.</p><p>Everything so perfectly suspended in time. Like a picture for them, and just them.</p><p><em>Where should we go next?</em> Hendery had asked. <em>I've always wanted to see Vietnam.</em></p><p>Hendery had originally wanted to go to Macau, but Doyoung vetoed it. This wasn't the time to be seeing parents, he had argued. Hendery had agreed, reluctantly. There's a delicate balance between their endless summer, and their misery. They tiptoed the lines.</p><p>So they went everywhere else. Shenyang, Beijing. Nanjing. Shanghai. Hanzhou. Fuzhou. Guangzhou. Shenzhen. </p><p>Every city frozen midmorning on a summer's day. Each beautiful, and hot and silent in their own way.</p><p>In China, Doyoung wanted to learn Chinese. <em>It was only natural</em>, he had argued,<em> I'm inspired.</em></p><p>And Hendery indulged him with lazy, but stupidly gleeful energy. There was no suspense, no anxiety over greeting fans, and new debuts, and new members to talk to - so why not?</p><p>Hendery whispered words and thoughts and the silence lending his voice until it thundered and whirred in the air, and Doyoung slowly but surely started to learn. He laughed when Doyoung couldn't intonate to save his life, and laughed harder when Doyoung tried harder. It was freeing. There was no rush.</p><p>Indulging a young man only makes them greedy. Hendery was always greedy.</p><p><em>I want to hear you speak Canto</em>. Hendery whined. <em>You can repeat after me! </em>Doyoung, he had decided, looked very cute from his angle on his lap, where he often found laying his head. He said that part out loud too. </p><p>Doyoung blushed, and didn't speak again. Hendery just poked those ribs until his hand was swatted away.</p><p><em>Did it hurt when you fell out of heaven?</em> Doyoung repeated it slowly, and missed every tone - and then truly blushed hot pink when he scoffed at the translation. But he had repeated himself until he could ask it to Hendery while looking him straight in the eye. Serious and red in the face. </p><p>Hendery considered it to be a personal victory. He said it did hurt when he fell, but it was worth it for someone like Doyoung. He didn't translate the second part.</p><p>There's a comfort in speaking one's most native tongue, and Hendery was most comfortable speaking Cantonese versus everything else. Calm. Confident. Secure. He holds himself differently, gestures differently - another side of Hendery solved. </p><p>(Doyoung likes feeling like he has forever to solve them all. He likes being able to watch Hendery. He likes being with him.)</p><p>They decide to run to Vietnam.</p><p><em>Don't think too hard about it,</em> Hendery had boundless excitement. <em>There aren't any bugs in the jungles this way!</em></p><p>Doyoung followed easily with a wide smile that shone under the sun. </p><p>They were free - or, it felt like being free. A poor imitation of true freedom, one with too many clauses and quite a few lines in the sand. So many to tiptoe around, and Hendery wonders when standing on his toes hurt so much.</p><p>But it felt like freedom on the tongue - and when Doyoung intertwined their fingers and they both ran into the distance, the rays of sun beaming on their backs but never burning - freedom never tasted so sweet.</p><p>******************</p><p>Hendery took a drag from his cigarette out in one of the small smoking courtyards. He remembers smoking these so often during the endless summer, and how he would just ransack little convenience stores for these little sticks. Nowadays, they cost too much to be worth it, and there was a heaviness in his lungs that never happened before. Maybe he just keeps the habit for nostalgia's sake.</p><p>He doesn't react when Doyoung slides open the door and reaches into his pocket for the box. It was their habit together, and it seems like both have kept it up.</p><p>"How have you been?"</p><p>The Korean was as familiar as it was foreign. "It's been alright." He cracks a small smile. "The members were confused for a whole week. The dorm was a mess."</p><p>"I forgot we shoved them all in that room for so long."</p><p>"I did too."</p><p>It's strange and awkward between the two of them. Hendery was used to conversations in utter silence. The soft city noises in the background and the wind brushing against Seoul were far too loud for him and every thought he could've shared with Doyoung were drowned out. Their new silence was astoundingly loud.</p><p>"How are you?"</p><p>Doyoung coughs out a puff of smoke. "It's been hard. Getting through, but barely." The smell of cigarette ashes reminds him of the heat, and the humidity. "I miss you."</p><p>"I haven't exactly gone anywhere. I'm a call away."</p><p>Doyoung laughs. It rings in his ears. "It's not the same."</p><p>There's a pang in his chest, and he knows that it's the same for Doyoung. "It's better this way, hyung." The honorific makes the both of them flinch. "You and I were both miserable if you didn't remember."</p><p>"How could I have been miserable in the summer?"</p><p>What a joke (he peeks at Doyoung's wry smile in the corner), what a cruel one. He remembers all the highs - climbing Pu Si Lung, seeing monkeys in the wild, the fat goldfish in murky ponds, Shanghai under the gleaming sun - and the brimming defeat and fear crawling right under his skin. The ugly emotions that threatened whatever sanity he had left in his grasp.</p><p>They had both begged for the end of their summer. He remembered that no one answered their prayers for such a long time. At some point, they were prepared to end it themselves.</p><p>The universe must have listened eventually, because they were handed back the world they had left in perfect condition. It was a shock really. </p><p>"I'm just glad I finally got to see Bella and Louis again. I missed them." He thinks about Sicheng's cute laugh, Xiaojun's dramatic demands, and Yukhei's expressive face, and wonders how he went so long without any of them. How long he had been just with Doyoung, without the support of the boys he also loved.</p><p>"I feel the same way. I never thought I'd miss Taeyong's damn fish, but they got under my skin."</p><p>"I thought you missed me?"</p><p>Doyoung gently bops his head, and ruffles his hair. "I missed them a little more. You weren't a good pet. Very annoying. Poorly trained."</p><p>He fingers thread through his hair in the same way he used to, in China, in Vietnam, in the alcove in SM on days they needed to leave the 5th floor. The memories of years gone by in a second.  </p><p>"You can't train fish." Hendery huffs. Their cigarettes were gone, and the city still rung loud in the background, but there's peace between them. The comforting fingers along his scalp. "You didn't train me either."</p><p>"Believe me, I tried. You're a difficult one." He mutters under his breath. The fondness is almost tangible. "I'm glad I spent that time with you."</p><p>Hendery releases the air in his lungs. They didn't talk about this during their summer - unspoken rules and all about how temporary <em>this</em> was and how temporary <em>they</em> were. The both of them were too scared to speak in certainty about anything at all.</p><p>The early autumn air and the gentle sounds of the city were reminders that that time has passed. No crazed freedom, just relief and the solid feeling of permanency. </p><p>And after all this time, he feels the same way. </p><p>(He confesses in Cantonese - the words that he never taught Doyoung, but it was all okay, because Doyoung whispered them back.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>not sure if this was clear but time stops and then they spend around 5 years hanging out and then time kinda just starts back up again</p><p>hope you enjoyed!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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